I Redesigned the ENTIRE Apple Music UI

Apple Music, one of Spotify's biggest competitors that's loved for its beautiful lyrics and criticized for the lack of basic features. I might have made a video complaining about the Spotify UI, but that doesn't mean that Apple Music is flawless. As a matter of fact, I've seen so many questionable UI choices on Apple Music that put me on a mission to redesign it and focus on the way it actually works. Apple Music is available on pretty much everything. Mac OS, iOS, Windows, Android, and web. There is no official Linux version, but shout out to Cider Collective for making it available there, too. Mac OS and iOS versions get updated fairly frequently, mostly along with the rest of the system. So, they look pretty much like the rest of those OSS. The Windows and Android versions look simple and functional. I think it's okay that each version has its own style. But we don't necessarily need liquid glass everywhere, especially since everyone has mixed feelings about it. So, let me make a disclaimer. This video is not about liquid glass. Even though I am tired of seeing glitches here and there still to this day, but it's not about that. There are real inconsistencies, options lacking, and confusing things Apple Music is tangled in. Did you know that Apple Music runs two parallel universes? One, your library, and two, Apple Music itself. When you add an album to your library, there's a version in your library and a whole different version in Apple Music. Yep, you can remove songs from an album. You can even edit the name of a hecken artist if you want. Meanwhile, the real artists and their albums are freely living on Apple Music. And that's why when you're playing a song and you go to more options, you see one show album in library and one show in Apple Music. And you might ask yourself, well, where else have I been all this time? And that is absurd. So, here's an idea, Apple Music. What if an album was the album or an artist's page was the artist's page? So, adding an album to your library is more like saving the album to your library. That's the first thing we untangle in this video. Apple Music has long menus, short menus, two item menus, and even one item menus. On desktop, you have completely different menus depending on where a song is, and that's fine. But why are options so messed up? Favorite is sometimes above get info. other times below getting info. Actually, why is the favorite option below everything else? Like favoriting is among the top three actions on a music platform. But here everything has a random order and that is not okay. Plus icons are weird too. This is add to playlist. This is show in playlist. This shows playlists on desktop. This shows playlists on mobile. Can we just agree on one icon for playlists? And since we changed add to library to save, then let's change add to playlist to a simple plus icon. So, we have save, favorite, and add to playlist. The download icon only shows if you have a song added to your library, which is four clicks to get to. Why not just let you have the option to download a song and automatically add it to the library. Now, we can arrange all the basic actions on the top with the rest of the options underneath them. And we'll keep that structure the same on both desktop and mobile. Now that we have that figured out, we should decide how the song attached to these menus will look like. Look at this album. If you want to favorite a song, you got to hover on it and then hover specifically over here to reveal the star. But hold up, what are these dots? So, apparently they're top songs of the album. Based on what? I don't know. But I love how when I favorite the song, that dot completely vanishes like it never existed. Why is the favorite icon even here? 5 billion pixels away from the other options. Bring everything together. On mobile, you see the star here and the download sign here. And what is this icon? Is it asking me to download something I've already downloaded? Why is it so small? Why is it grayed out? Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be a check mark or something? Still, these icons are taking space, but they're purely cosmetic. If you want to do anything at all, you have to open the menu. Well, why don't we put both as buttons on the right side so you can simply tap on them? And if you're downloading a song, it could show the progress like this. Now you have your songs with clear options and clear menus. On mobile, you have five tabs. Home, new for new music, radio for 24/7 live radios and podcasts, library, and search. That looks like a separate button. When you click on it, it pushes the other items out, and the search box takes the whole space. Plus, I have to press on the search box again to start searching. The search box being on the bottom has recently been added to iOS. And yeah, it's supposedly good for reachability. But what if you immediately want to use the filters up here before searching or after searching? You have to reach out up here. What's the point of the search box being within reach then? I can't imagine bringing the filters down here to fix it. But then you get this. Plus, the results start over here and the search is down here. So, your eyes still have to travel up and down. Then it takes one agonizing click on the small icon to get back to the menu and then another click to get to another section. Are we sacrificing everything for one singular search box to be closer to your thumb? You know what? I have an idea. What if we bring the frequently used control center to the bottom of the phone? Don't get me wrong, I'm the biggest advocate for putting everything within thumbs reach. And the search box might actually work in a lot of the other apps, but not here. And that's okay. A music app isn't a book or a gallery app. This design is also pretty inconsistent because literally in the same Apple Music app, you have a search box for playlists on the top. And artists just don't even have a search box. Like, Apple, are we okay? They also added this animation along with all this to make the whole bottom part more compact. But the annoying thing about that is if you want to expand it again, you either go to the very top of the page or reach out here and click on this icon. This is unnecessary. What if we just move the search box to the top and put filters right beneath it and join search with the rest of the menu. Now, every time you press on search, it automatically opens the keyboard for you to get searching. And if you don't want that and you want to browse, it's right there. And that's a layout for mobile. On desktop, you have one sidebar for navigation with search, home, new, and radio on the top, library in the middle with sections you can actually edit to show or hide, though no real library page like on mobile. And finally, a list of your playlists. This layout has no real issues except the resize function being weird. The only purpose it serves is letting you read the names fully. Cool. What if we also had the option to collapse the sidebar? But Jax, we need some navigation options. Well, yeah. That's why we add a compact menu on the top. You even get a full library page where you could see everything you have in one glance. I kind of got this idea from iPad apps, and I know it's irrelevant, but it adds so much potential. This was the last thing we untangled. We can finally begin our music journey. The search page is also a place to browse new music, but these categories are so random. Apple should have some idea of what our favorite genres are. So, your favorite genres should come first and then come the rest of the categories. Wait, you know what? I got reminded of a song. Wait, where are the results all mixed together? Song and album looks so awfully similar. I almost clicked on the wrong one. And why is the music video so far apart from the song itself in the middle of other songs, not to mention it messing up the whole layout. The search page is embarrassing. We're searching for a song, so we need the songs first, then album results, music videos, relevant artists, and so on. But I also want to add a sorting menu to sort results by date released, recently played, and most relevant to you. Now, say we looked up a band, then we should get the band in a featured section along with their top songs. And then the rest of the relevant results. On desktop, when you click on search, the search bar is already focused for you to begin typing. Pretty much the same behavior we just proposed for mobile, but filtering and sorting is basically non-existent. Let's bring the same options and the same organization to desktop as well. And by the way, this is one of the best albums ever, and we have to check it out together. Albums are the major focus of Apple Music, and this design doesn't serve them right. First of all, it's so soulless. Add some colors to this place. Then, there's so much waste of space, yet all the handy options are shoved in a menu. Put some play options, library buttons, and the ability to search and filter. any other complimentary information like how long the album is or the actual release date should be up here. But right now, you can only see them at the end over here. Why doesn't Apple put the release dates anywhere? Like, I love not being able to tell the difference between these albums. What I love even more is not being able to see all the artists featured in that album. Got to be my top 10 favorite experiences on Earth. What do you mean I have to manually look up the names of any artists beside the ones listed up here? These simple changes would vastly upgrade albums. And you know what else? Playlists. They're actually worse cuz they don't even have proper sorting. Like being able to sort the songs by the date you added them to the playlist. And why is the sorting under filters? Where are the filters themselves? How do I filter the favorites or the downloaded songs? It's not even funny. Playlists need the same formula as albums with proper sorting options and filters. As usual, mobile gets a suitable version of what we just made both for albums and playlists. Thankfully, now we can have a list of artists. Wait, what is this? Let me zoom out. Is this Mobin? What? You don't know Mobin? Well, it's today's amazing sponsor that also happens to be one of the best resources for designers. Mobin has a massive library of real life design examples and inspirations you can actually use to get ideas for your next project. They recently added animations, too. Look at this. These are real curated designs. I actually, for real, use Mobin regularly to stay updated with the world of design. And guess what? You can do it, too. Just click on the link in the description to try Mobin and get 20% off your first year subscription. Thanks again, Mobin. Now, back to the video. So, what do we have here? All right, let me search for a song of this band. There's no search bar. Am I supposed to visit every single album to find the song I'm looking for? Holy, how hard is it to put a couple filter and search options over here? And maybe some play or shuffle buttons and so on. All right, top songs. Let's see. Wait, did the song order just change? And this specific issue might not be obvious, but why does it just stop playing the next top song when it reaches the end of this list? It should continue with the next song. This is all too much. Just put the top 10 songs of the artist over here. And for the rest, guide us to all the top songs. Then put the latest release and essential albums next to it. Down here, we have all the artists albums. And then we must have singles. Right. Right. Of course not. We have some other list. Singles and EPs are not as unimportant as you think. Apple, bring them up. Then come the music videos and other playlists. At the bottom of the page, you have more information about the artist. But what's really annoying is that while there are similar artists, band members are nowhere to be found. Layout aside, we came here to listen to music. So, let's check out the albums. Wait, is that it? No filter, no nothing. Like Apple, you already have a clean layout for that in the library. Just reuse it with a list on the side and the content on the right. Now you have two different views for the albums and different filters like hiding or showing the special edition albums which could be handy. On mobile, the artist page could use the same style we made for albums and playlists so they all look consistent. And there you have your new artist page you can actually use. Our next stop, you guessed it, we made a library page on desktop, but we didn't build it yet. It should look something like mobile. We start from pins, then recent activity, songs, albums, artists, and genres. Then you want a downloads folder for a unified space for all downloaded songs. And just like downloads, you want an uploads folder. We also need a section for stations. What are stations? They're like radios that you can make from one song. And even though you can share them with someone, there is no other way to save them. A page for that wouldn't hurt. All these sections have to be expandable and collapsible on top of opening in dedicated pages. And in these pages, we use the same design we made on the artist's page. The only section I want to talk about specifically on desktop is a song list. While on mobile, it looks normal. On desktop, it turns into a file manager. I know, I know, lots of you guys want to see all the details, and that's amazing. But some of us would appreciate some simplicity, or you might call it consistency with the rest of the app. So, let's keep this but add another view that's more like the song styles we've had so far with all the sorting and filtering options necessary in the world on mobile. I decided not to make many changes cuz it's okay. Some polishing and making it consistent with the rest of the design is fine. And that's our new library. But enough about us. Let's see the content Apple Music wants to show us. I bet they're cool. These two are by far the worst things I've seen in my life. and a list. Why? I appreciate all creators, but this is a list of random radio episodes and that's pretty much it. Want to see the whole show? Well, good luck because there's nothing here. And it gets even worse on desktop. Like, of course, you got to manually look up the name of the show. Same case with everything else on Apple Music. So, see for consistency, I guess. Cherry on top. You can't see your progress into an episode. Yeah, you can follow the radios you listen to and you can get a heads up when they release a new episode. Straight up telling us to go to the podcast app. This is still here, so we have to deal with it. Instead of random shows, wouldn't it have been better to have your favorite shows first with their latest episodes properly showing how much of them you listen to? Then we could have some recommended episodes of other shows with clear buttons to the shows themselves. On the new section, you have an entire page that's a mixture of everything new from every category, and none of it is related to you. It's just new popular things in the world, and you're barely a part of it. Then at the bottom of the page, completely lost and abandoned, you have a set of buttons to the most important pages of the app. Charts, music videos, why wasn't I shown this before? Each of these have to be their own tabs in this page so they get more visibility all in one place. And moods, genres, or decades look more like they belong in the browse section. So, let's take them there and put them on different rows. Let's also bring radio shows to the new page because really, it just shows you new content anyway. And now everything in the new pages is still mostly what's popular and less of what you like. So let's add another tab for you. Everything new that's related to you goes here. Now you have all the latest in music from what you like to things that are popular in the world in every category all in one glance. Because of these arrangements, we have an extra space on the navigation bar. And I think it would be cool to have a screen where you can type or say what you feel like listening to and getting music recommendations based on that. Then you can make a playlist to save it for later. Music is a personal thing and your music app should look more like your taste. And when it comes to your taste, there's no place like home. It all comes down to your homepage where you both get some of the new stuff, old stuff, and recommendations. But your home is so random and at some point it just ends and does not recommend anything new anymore. It would be nice to refresh the homepage to get new recommendations so you're not just stuck with the same things. Then you get these rows for genres, but there's no way to explore more of that genre directly. Just put one of these icons here and take me to the genres page. This is such a no-brainer. The entire homepage is filled with stations and albums, but there aren't many or any user curated playlists, only Apple playlists. Like Apple, not everything is about you. We need more sections for playlists on the homepage. Now I can pick one of these and listen to some chill music. Now playing on mobile is loanually one of the most iconic and attractive music players that currently exist, especially with the blurry animations and the breathing background. But it completely fails when you try to manually scroll the lyrics. With this area constantly expanding to cover a massive part of the screen, leaving only this much space for lyrics. And this is especially annoying for someone like me who's trying to learn languages through songs. Let's try something. What if we remove this volume slider first? Apple has one reason why it should be here. And I have three why I shouldn't. One, if you turn the volume up or down in the entire iOS, you see a volume slider over here. So your eyes are used to looking at this spot, except in the music player. The slider just completely disappears and instead you have to remember to look down here. Two, if this volume slider only controlled the volume for Apple Music, then it would make sense like on desktop. But on mobile, it doesn't do that. It actually affects the whole phone, so there's no point. And three, it takes so much space. Instead, it could be in the airplane menu like it is even right now. There's still so much waste of space on this page and we don't even have the shuffle or repeat icon here. For those, you have to move somewhere else and reach out on the top. I have an unconventional idea. What if we have the full name in the middle, options like lyrics or Q underneath, consistent with album or playlist designs, and down here on the right, we have a menu for shuffle, repeat, autoplay, and automix. So, for example, this is how a playlist on repeat and shuffle will look like. Finally, on the left, we'll have the airplane menu. And now, switching to lyrics or Q is easy, and you have so much space reserved for them. This is just the big player. What about the small one? Let me grab my magnifier. Okay, I can see several abnormalities. One, even though you can swipe left or right to change the song, you still have this icon instead of any other useful icon like AirPlay. Two, you can't see how far into the song you are. And three, not an issue, but the design is so boring compared to the big player. How about this design? The corners match the album cover and a light shines through it with the same color as the artwork. On desktop, upon continued investigation of the player, I quickly discovered some issues with it. One, these icons being microscopic. Two, not being able to visit the artists from neither here nor the menu. Three, this janky animation. Four, the volume slider taking a click to open but disappearing when you simply move away from it. and five, not being able to resume playing a song from another device. The solution is simple. Let's style this like we did on mobile, making every icon properly sized, including the favorite icon. Placing this track bar so it needs no extra animation. Now we can move over the song we were listening to on mobile. But this is just the beginning. The real experience of a song on Apple Music desktop is so crooked. When you open the lyrics or want to see the queue, a new sidebar appears here with that content. You might think it's a bit too narrow. You can't even read the full names of songs and albums. So, you move here to resize it, right? Will it resize? No, it doesn't. It just toggles this off. Plus, when it's open, your eyes are focused over here. And if you want to close the sidebar, you have to move your focus here. And not just that, but to take any action on the song, your eyes have to travel the whole screen. This is simply unnatural. All the song related actions have to be in one place near each other. So, I propose this. It basically looks like a mini player with all the options you need, and you could easily switch to different views or even resize it. This goes really well with the compact navigation we created earlier, so you can explore and fully immerse yourself. Now, I want you to think of your favorite song, the artists that worked on it, the album it's a part of, the music videos or lyrics videos for it, and every other person included in the making of it. How can you see all this information all at once on Apple Music? You do have a get info screen on desktop and a credit page on mobile, but it's limited and none of the names are clickable. On mobile, if a song has multiple artists, you can only visit one of them. And on desktop, you only have the menu. Imagine if you didn't have to scavenge for information. Imagine a place with all the info about a song. The album cover, the full name of the song, all the featured artists and not just one of them, music videos, the album or albums the song is a part of, and finally, a full list of credits with clickable links to their artists profile if they exist on Apple Music. This page would be in your player on mobile or on desktop. I think Apple Music just needs a bit more love put into it, and I'm hopeful for the next few years. Putting these all together. You ever just need a song? Browse for every mood and every activity and every decade. Looking for something specific? Search. Get your results organized. Want something else? Tell us exactly what you feel like and get recommendations right away. Feel like new stuff? Explore. There are infinite options. Like this video? Keep it. Like that radio show? Save it. Like that song, album, artist, playlist? Favorite it. and see them all again in your library. Pick a song, play it, and most importantly, enjoy it in any shape you want. We know it's a lot. Just press a button and everything gets untangled. And sometimes you just need to look at things from a different angle. Landscape, more like escape to music. Apple Music. Well, that's all for this video. If you liked it, make sure you do your magic down below and see you on the next one.